Taking the pulse of Wisconsin supper clubs

Kevin Pang, Tribune reporter

KENOSHA — My future brother-in-law Nick is Kenosha's proudest son. When I mentioned stopping by Mars Cheese Castle, I spied his subtle "oh, my naive friend" shake of the head. He steered me a few miles east instead, toward the tourist-free Tenuta's Deli, and indeed, we found enough Spotted Cow beer and Usinger's sausage to stock the bunker into the year 2100.

What we came for, however, was a more deeply rooted Wisconsin quintessence. In the 20-minute drive from Interstate Highway 94 to Lake Michigan's shore, he pointed out three restaurants that were once supper clubs — Krok's, Candlelite, Casino Town House — but all of which have morphed into something different. Those three have joined countless supper clubs that have shuttered — a restaurant genre on the endangered list — with little evidence except faded newspaper clippings and the memories of Wisconsinites old enough to remember.

The difficulty is how to define a supper club. I have yet to find a satisfactory answer. The most pithy response falls along the line of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's in defining pornography: "I know it when I see it." The phrase "supper club" isn't indigenous to the Badger State, but few other people embrace it with such civic reverence. There must be a way to explain it.

Truism No. 1: Supper clubs are associated with road trips and vacations, with many restaurants overlooking a lake or forest clearing, situated on the outskirts of town, or located in some out-of-the-way place that connotes distance from home. Loyalties to a supper club span generations.

Our headfirst dive into supper club culture begins with a panoramic view of Lake Michigan, placid and gray on this day. In the foreground is HobNob, a peach and pink building of straight angles that would have been avant-garde in 1950s Southern California. Painted on the wall is a two-story martini glass, and at night, the neon "Food & Cocktails" sign blazes so bright it's probably visible from commercial planes.

There is never one rigid definition of ambience that applies to all supper clubs. It's more an amalgam of subtle touches that paint a larger whole. The lodge is an ever-popular motif, aesthetically as Wisconsin as it gets. Many others look like your grandparents' living room — all trinkets and wallpaper and vinyl tablecloths. Supper clubs run the gamut from humble to ostentatious, perhaps none quite as eye-catching as the Egyptian-themed Pyramid of the Nile Supper Club in Beaver Dam, Wis., noted for its garish 40-foot tall pyramid surrounded by cornfields. It closed in 2009 after 48 years in business.

HobNob favors a look that evokes a four-star hotel ballroom of the 1960s. "Mad Men's" Don Draper could have sat on the white leatherlike bar chairs if he ever went soft and ordered a brandy old-fashioned. The east-facing glass window stretches long and horizontal, offering a widescreen lake view that fills to the ends of one's peripheral vision.

Again, subtle touches paint a larger whole. Nick points out the energetic carpet pattern, a swirl of paisley designs reinforcing the fine-dining notion. The menu, he adds, is always printed in serif fonts: an elegant italicized script or some variation of Times New Roman.

Candles sit on white tablecloths. Booths are purple with gold floral patterns, colors that conjure royalty. The gold trim continues, jumping from seats to the black faux-marble walls. Something about the place says "special occasion."

Truism No. 2:A $30 entree at a supper club is not a $30 entree in downtown Milwaukee or Chicago.

We've never experienced garlic bread sliced table-side. Now this is some classy joint. A snow-white Gorgonzola sauce oozes over one end of the crisp loaf, playing into every preconceived narrative of Wisconsin and Wisconsin-ness.

Nick orders the Wiener schnitzel, the surface area of Prince Fielder's first baseman's glove. My prime rib is a primordial pink slab with white fat hunks and a rosemary-flecked roasted exterior. Here, as in many places, a sprig of decorative parsley is still the garnish of choice.

And yet! A double-cut portion exists, a serving size so incomprehensible that the only justification would be eating this while television cameras filmed you.

At a supper club, "you never finish your meal," said Spiaggia chef Tony Mantuano, a Kenosha native. "There's always going to be a value peg involved at supper clubs. I remember once forgetting the doggie bag and getting really, really upset."

What separates the supper club genre from other restaurants is here, they prefer the word "and" over "or." It seems like the antithesis of Wisconsin hospitality to decide between soup or salad, so more often than not, you get both, on top of the bread basket of saltines and sesame breadsticks and dinner rolls, the baked potato, the kidney bean salad, the pickles, the cheese spread, so on, so forth. By the time the main event arrives, you've already been fed into submission by the undercard.

It's no coincidence the term "doggie bag" is attributed to a Wisconsinite, Lawrence Frank, the man who in 1938 launched the Lawry's prime rib chain in Beverly Hills and who is considered the forefather of supper clubs.

Carol Deptolla, restaurant critic at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, had this theory: "In immigrant cultures in the U.S., I think a big part of 'making it' is that there's a sense of plenty. Wherever you emigrated from, food might have been an issue. Who knows if there's a straight line between that and supper clubs, but the way you welcome people is with a lot of food and generous portions. Supper clubs give off a welcoming feeling."

Deptolla's parents lived in postwar Germany, where finding enough food to feed their family was a challenge. When her parents moved to Wisconsin, Deptolla's mother told her there was no greater shame than not having enough food at a dinner party.

A few days later, I am at Dobie's Steak House in St. Francis, on the periphery of Milwaukee. It looks like a home from the outside and a home on the inside. It is Thanksgiving season — the window stares into an outdoor scarecrow-harvest time scene, and the dining room reflects the times, fake fall foliage and a warm glow of orange against purple tablecloths everywhere.

While significant menu real estate is devoted to Dobie's steaks, fried chicken and breaded lake perch, they unjustly underplay the Lazy Susan, those words appearing once along the bottom in small type. Think of this as the ultimate in amuse-bouches, and this being a supper club, the Lazy Susan was a meal itself.

The more popular term is relish tray, a vegetable platter prelude presented in the most elegant of layouts (as pickle layouts go). Dobie's Lazy Susan is a white ceramic dish with fluted edges; within are six ramekins of assorted salads and spreads, each with spoons jutting out at matching angles, like synchronized swimmers. From 12 o'clock going clockwise: creamy coleslaw, two Swedish meatballs with gravy, sliced beets, sweet corn relish, kidney bean salad, and in the middle, a pastel orange-colored cheese spread. It's a democracy of texture, taste sensation and colors on the spectrum. And it's complimentary.

"When I was a kid growing up in northern Wisconsin, there weren't a lot of choices in the grocery store during wintertime," said James Leary, the director of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Culture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "Before shipping produce from Central and South America, you got a lot more pickled vegetables in the winter. So for relish trays, having pickled cucumbers, corn, mushrooms or root crops such as carrots and radishes are conventional."

Some restaurants, though, have begun charging for their relish tray, which some purists say crosses a mutually acknowledged line, the same line dictating soda and peanuts be free on airlines.

In a story published in the quarterly magazine Wisconsin People & Ideas, author Brenda K. Bredahl cites the website Foodspot.com as listing 450 Wisconsin restaurants using the term "supper club." Many more don't label themselves as such but are undeniably influenced by supper club culture and norms. Ron Faiola, a Milwaukee filmmaker, believes the figure is closer to 1,000 throughout Wisconsin, though that number is declining.

In his terrific documentary "Wisconsin Supper Clubs: An Old Fashioned Experience," Faiola profiled 14 restaurants that have held on, even against the tide of changing tastes, aging clientele and struggling economy.

"They're going out of business. The crowd is not getting younger. The supper clubs can't compete with people going to chains, and the younger diners who want faster service and to be more entertained by what they eat," Faiola told me. "Now I'm seeing supper clubs make pizza and fajitas. Some places are adding televisions to create a sports bar atmosphere. I don't like it."

These days, a few urban restaurateurs freely use the term to describe their establishments because saying "supper club" is novel in its anachronism. It's something true-blue Wisconsin supper clubs can use to their advantage: nostalgia as restaurant genre.

"People in their 30s and 40s come into my place and say, 'Wow.' It's a blast from the past. It gives them the warm fuzzies," said Mike Aletto, who owns HobNob with his wife, Anne. "It gives them memories of when their grandparents took them out for a nice dinner."

But nostalgia didn't save Krok's, Candlelite, Casino Town House or Pyramid of the Nile. I asked Aletto how HobNob was holding up.

"We're doing OK. Would I wish for more business? Absolutely. We just have to take care of those who do come in."

I am no Wisconsinite, nor do I dare pretend to be anything but a keen outsider. But here's my humble attempt at defining a supper club. It is not succinct, but it's the best I can do:

A Wisconsin supper club is an independently owned, fine-dining destination restaurant, typically in a picturesque locale on the edge of town. The menu comes from yesteryear, void of pretense and decidedly non-froufrou — prime rib, broiled white fish, shrimp cocktail — with enough complimentary sides and trimmings to satisfy a second meal.

A relish tray should begin the meal, and three hours later, is bookended with house-made bread pudding or cheesecake. On Fridays they should serve an all-you-can-eat fish fry. A band might be performing. Mixed cocktails such as Manhattans and brandy old-fashioneds are preferred over wine or beer. If you leave hungry, you have not dined in a supper club.